


Damian: a collection

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Robin: Son of Batman (Comics), batfam - Fandom
Genre: Gen, collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 20:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19158580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: These are a series of short, completely unconnected scenes (1 per chapter). I'd like to emphasize: this is NOT any kind of cohesive story.In order:1. Tim probably isn't the best person for Damian to talk to about his problems, but uh, they make do.2. Damian has a nightmare.3. A mission with Maya Ducard.4. A mission with Stephanie Brown. The two of them talk about Bruce.5. Alright, so Damian gets motion sick.6. A very early Damian makes some plans.7. Dick and Bruce have a discussion about Damian's love.8. Damian and Jason hang out. It's just straightforward fluff.





	1. Good Things

**Author's Note:**

> Once again: these do not fit together. They're meant to be read one story per chapter.

Tim sighed as the door to his room banged open. He knew without looking who would be behind the wood. Only one person in the household treated doors like that.

  
Damian didn’t believe in knocking. He stamped through Tim’s doorway and into the room, threw his laptop onto Tim’s comforter, and collapsed cross legged into the armchair in the corner. He pulled his phone from the pocket of his hoodie and examined the screen with feigned absorption, not looking at Tim at all.

  
“Ahem,” said Tim.

  
No response.

  
“Okay then. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  
“No.”

  
“Then why are you here?”

  
Damian’s eyes, still focussed on his phone, narrowed. His fingers wrapped around the casing shook slightly. He took an unsteady breath.

  
“Drake, am I evil?”

  
“In general or at this second?”

  
Damian’s cheeks turned red. He began to climb out of his chair.

  
“Hold on,” said Tim. He sat back against his pillows and took a long look at Damian: shaky, flushed, tense, breathing like he couldn’t. Tim recognized the signs.

Something was very wrong. This was important.

  
Damian sank back into his seat, looking directly at Tim this time. “Well?”

  
“No.”

  
“I… no?”

  
Tim rolled his eyes. “No, Damian, you are not evil, but you are obnoxious, arrogant, and a pain in my ass.”

  
Damian blinked at him.

  
“Should I go on?”

  
Damian nodded.

  
“Oh, in that case: entitled, insufferable, annoyingly competent, and much better than you used to be. Also ungrateful, sarcastic, egotistical, infuriating, and— yes, Damian, you had a question?

  
Damian had raised his hand in a wait-a-minute kind of gesture.

  
“What did you say?” he asked.

  
“Infuriating?”

  
“Before that. Annoyingly competent and… better than I used to be?”

  
“Yes.”

  
“And you mean that?”

  
Tim sighed again. “Yes, I mean that. I meant everything I just said, and I think you know enough about this relationship to know that I’m telling the truth. You believe I think all those bad things about you, right?”

  
“I do.”

  
“Then believe the good things too, because there are good things, Damian. I don’t like you that much, but even I can see how much you’ve grown. Can you imagine having this conversation a year, two years ago?”

  
“Not really.”

  
“Neither can I.” Tim ran a hand through his hair. “We wouldn’t stop fighting long enough to speak to each other. But times have changed, you know? And so have you.”

  
Damian seemed to consider Tim’s words. “Are there… other good things you think about me?”

  
“Sure.”

  
Damian stared at him. Ah well, Tim figured. Too late to stop now.

  
“Compassionate, empathetic, considerate, kind to people that aren’t me,” Tim listed. “Protective, intelligent, and as a fighter… well, let’s circle back to annoyingly competent. I’ve seen the things you do to make other people happy. I’ve seen how much you care for the people you love, me included.”

  
Damian opened his mouth to protest.

  
“Shut up,” Tim told him. “I know what I said. You love your family, and you love your animals, and you love this city— especially the people in it that need your help. That’s growth right there. You know it is.”

  
“I guess.”

  
“Uh huh.”

  
“Anything else you’d like to add?”

  
Tim nodded. “Intolerable, exasperating, aggravating, conceited—”

  
Damian almost smiled at that. “Bastard,” he said.

  
“I’m aware.” Tim waved Damian away. “Get out of my room.”

 


	2. Lungs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian has a nightmare.

Damian sank into the darkness of the water clouded red by his own blood. He fell slowly, helplessly, unable to move or breathe as the heaviness of an ocean pressed down against him. He was dying, again, and he could feel it, the same as before: the sensation of cold in his chest, then nothing, then terrible pain that spread across his body and into his lungs.

  
He wasn’t drowning in water. He was drowning in blood. Damian clutched one hand to the hole in his chest and felt it leeching out of him. The surface drifted further and further away as the water pulled Damian down into the depths.

  
He saw the last rays of light vanish. He felt sand and rock and currents shift beneath him— and shapes in the darkness, swarming as he fell.

  
Damian knew he was dreaming, he did. He knew he would wake up, alive and whole, in his bedroom. He knew that morning would come.

  
None of that helped. Damian fell faster now, through mangled, decaying bodies anchored beneath the surface by rusting chains that led downward into oblivion. He saw grinning skulls turn towards him, swollen flesh hanging off their broken jaws. Damian struggled to escape them, but he couldn’t swim, couldn’t fight, couldn’t do anything but sink away.

  
Clammy hands closed around his elbows. Damian tried to scream, but when he opened his mouth, all that came out was blood. The hands jerked downward, taking Damian with them.

  
He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again and again, hoping to open his eyes for real. Then the dream could end. Then Damian would be safe.

  
It didn’t work. Damian felt something huge slam against him, something with jagged scales and long teeth that ripped into his flesh. He struggled to push it off of him, grappled as much as he could with the seconds he had left before he died for a second time— or a third, or a fifteenth, or a hundredth, it was hard to tell when he couldn’t think, while he choked on his own blood, while his consciousness faded away and left him in the darkness.

  
He woke suddenly with a dark shape still pressing down on him. Damian lunged for a blade, or at least, he tried to. His arm was pinned beneath whatever mass lay on his chest. He screamed into the emptiness of his bedroom.

  
The shape above him barked loudly, then resolved into a giant dog. Damian relaxed into his bed, and Titus released him, retreating back into the darkness while Damian sat upright and gasped for air. He heard movement on the floor above him. Someone was coming.

  
He would need to be together by the time his door opened. He had a thirty second, maybe a minute before it did.

  
Until then, Damian curled into his mound of pillows and sobbed.

 


	3. Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mission with Maya Ducard.

“There’s two of them,” whispered Maya. She went up on her tiptoes again to peer through a small hole in the drywall. “Big, strong looking men.”

  
Damian nodded. He could hear them talking on the other side of the wall.

  
“Yeah,” said one voice. “I saw him once. I was working for Two-Face at the time. He stepped out of the shadows, and we all scattered. Better to keep your ribs intact than to get paid, you know?”

  
“Twice,” said another, deeper voice. “Both with Riddler. Got a broken arm out of the second fiasco.”

  
“The Bat?”

  
“The kid.”

  
“Which?”

  
“It happened a year ago,” said the deep voice. “Same one as now. He scares me more than the Bat does these days.”

  
Damian smiled to himself. A reputation. Excellent.

  
Maya reached over and punched him in the shoulder, hard enough to hurt, but not by much.

  
“You broke his arm?” she whispered.

  
“Apparently. I’ll stay here where I can hear them. You go watch their movement from above.”

  
Maya stared at him.

  
“What?”

  
She gestured to the hole in the drywall. “Does that look like your eye level?” she asked. “You won’t be able to see.”

  
“I’ll be fine.”

  
“Do you have a stepladder in your belt?”

  
Damian sighed. “I expect a growth spurt this year.”

  
“And then what, I’ll be sorry?”

  
“And then you’ll lose all your comedic material,” whispered Damian, “since this is the only joke you ever tell.”

  
Maya rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t worry. No matter how tall you get, I’m still making short jokes.”

  
“Great.”

  
“Just plant a camera like a normal person. We can both go watch from the roof.”

  
“No,” whispered Damian. He was determined now. “This is fine.”

  
“You’re insufferable.”

  
Damian crossed his arms. “Thank you.”

  
“I don’t know why you always—” Maya cut off suddenly. “Oh hell.”

  
The voices on the other side of the wall had gone silent. Damian and Maya looked at each other for a half second, then dove in opposite directions as gunfire cut through the drywall.

  
“I told you!” said the deep-voiced man, now visible through the shredded wall.

  
“And I told you,” snapped Maya. Damian blinked, and she disappeared. Stealth suit. Good.

  
Damian burst through what remained of the wall, slid underneath deep-voice, came up behind him, and kicked him in the head. Deep-voice grunted in pain and turned to take a swing. While he was occupied, Damian spun into another kick that knocked the gun out of deep-voice’s hand.

  
The gun clattered to the floor, then moved as if on its own accord— across the concrete, far away from the two henchmen who both turned to watch it go. Damian took the opportunity to strike deep-voice in the chest with the heel of his hand. The man doubled over in pain, all the wind knocked out of him.

  
Damian brought his leg down in a third kick, squarely at the back of deep-voice’s neck. Deep-voice went down, unconscious.

  
As soon as he did, the other henchman began to fire his gun again. The spray of bullets came towards Damian; he dove aside for the second time, cape up as protection, then rolled behind a pillar. The henchman took a step in his direction.

  
At that point, an invisible force slammed into the henchman. He lost his gun in the scuffle, fell to the ground, and pulled himself up again.

  
At least, he tried to. Halfway through the process, the invisible force rammed into him for a second time, and he fell back to the floor with an audible thump. He didn’t get up.

  
Maya flickered back into view above the unconscious man and shot Damian a thumbs up. He stood and walked over from behind the pillar.

  
“What now?” Maya asked.

  
“We wait, I suppose. I’m sure someone heard all that noise.”

  
“Like they heard us through the wall? You know that wouldn’t have happened if you had listened to me the first time.”

  
“That was both our faults at best. You were the one making unnecessary jokes.”

  
Maya grinned. “Wouldn’t call them unnecessary.”

  
“Who’s insufferable now?” Damian gathered both guns from the floor and began to disassemble one. He tossed Maya the other so that she could do the same.

  
“Yeah yeah,” said said. “Hilarious.”

 


	4. Approval

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mission with Stephanie Brown. They talk about Bruce.

Stephanie’s cape flapped in the wind blowing through her rooftop and over the alley beneath her. Her target— their target— sat motionless in a folding chair, gun in lap. He hadn’t moved in an hour, and they didn’t expect him to for another two.

  
Still, someone had to keep watch, and they’d drawn the short straw.

  
Damian fidgeted slightly in his seat next to her. His fingers tapped softly on the edge of the roof.

  
“Brown?” he asked suddenly.

  
“Batgirl,” Stephanie corrected. “And yes?”

  
“How did you…?” He trailed off. “My father. He speaks positively about you.”

  
“Oh,” Stephanie said. “Thanks?”

  
“But it seems that wasn’t always the case.”

  
“True.”

  
“Why is that?”

  
Stephanie thought about it. “Well,” she decided, “when I first became the Spoiler, he didn’t think I could cut it. He said I was going to get myself killed, and honestly, a couple of times I came close. I wasn’t… very good at following instructions. I was outside his control, and he hated that.”

  
“I see,” said Damian.

  
“Then I became Robin. I thought that would solve the problem between us, and for awhile, it seemed like it did. But then he fired me, and then… the resulting chaos.”  
Stephanie sighed. “On my part… I just wanted to prove to him that I could do it. That I was… good enough.”

  
Damian nodded solemnly. He bit at his lip. Stephanie began to understand why he’d started this conversation in the first place.

  
Poor kid.

  
“Look,” she said. “It… it took awhile, but it happened.”

  
“How?”

  
“I got better. Not just at fighting, or strategizing, or whatever else. I got stronger as a person, and I grew, and I changed. I think I got his approval when I didn’t need it anymore. I’m not saying that’s a model for… anyone… but I think it is the truth.”

  
“I see,” said Damian again.

  
“I just realized that I was good enough, already, whether he liked it or not. I’m me, and maybe I still need work, but… I don’t know. I guess I found my place in the world. It doesn’t matter what Batman thinks about me. Or about anyone else.”

  
Damian continued to tap pensively on the concrete.

  
Stephanie smiled. “Slapping him was pretty cathartic too.”

  
“You did what?”

  
“Slapped him,” Stephanie repeated. She pointed down into the alley. “Our man’s on the move. Let’s go.”

 


	5. Motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so Damian gets motion sick.

Damian’s head ached. His stomach churned. His entire body felt stiff and painful. He put down his stack of reports and stared out the window of the car as the landscape blurred by, but it didn’t help. He still felt sick.

  
Damian closed his eyes, leaned back against his headrest, and tried to take deep breaths. That didn’t help either; it did, however, attract unwanted attention.

  
Drake reached over from his side of the backseat and tapped Damian on the shoulder. “You good?”

  
“Yes. I’m thinking.”

  
“About what?”

  
“Stabbing you. Leave me alone.”

  
Drake sighed in a I-don’t-know-what-I-expected kind of way, but he didn’t give up— just leaned in closer, so that neither Alfred (driver’s seat) nor Father (passenger’s seat) could hear him.

  
“If you’re having trouble again…”

  
“I’m not.”

  
“And you don’t have some kind of injury you’re hiding?”

  
“No.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Damian wasn’t suffering from an injury.

  
He was just motion sick. It happened. Nobody needed to know about it.

  
“Because I know Bruce talked to you about this. The whole ‘nobody can sense my weakness’ thing? Not good. Gets you killed.”

  
“I said I’m fine, Drake.”

  
“You don’t look fine, and I—”

  
Before he could continue, Damian pulled on his headphones and intentionally, very obviously, clicked the volume up to a level he was sure Drake could hear across the car. Drake kept talking. Damian refused to read his lips and looked him straight in the eye instead, blinking through narrowed eyes every once in awhile for dramatic emphasis. Eventually, Drake got the point. He rolled his eyes, picked up his own stack of reports, and went back to reading.

  
Good. Damian did the same. A log of Penguin’s activity in the dock district, April 2019…

  
Alfred turned down an exit and into a gas station parking lot. Damian’s stomach lurched so hard he developed real concerns about his ability to keep down his lunch.  
The second the car came to a stop, Damian leapt from his seat and out into the fresh air. He leaned forward and panted with his hands on his knees until his stomach settled.

  
“Car sick?” asked Father sympathetically as he climbed from his own side of the car.

  
“Yes.” said Damian.

  
“Caaaaaalled it,” said Drake through the open door. He drew out the words and grinned. “You could have said something.”

  
“Don’t laugh, Tim.” Father turned back to Damian. “We talked about this last night. If you need help, you have to say it.”

  
“Fine.”

  
“For real this time?”

  
Damian thought about it. “Yes.”

  
Drake fished through his bag and handed over a packet of dramamine. “Here. Take it and fall asleep.”

  
“We’ll be home in an hour,” said Father. “It won’t be long.”

  
Damian snatched the packet from Drake’s hand and popped out a tablet, sighing.

  
“Don’t worry,” said Drake. He grinned again. “It’s chewable.”

 


	6. Detective

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very early Damian makes some plans.

Damian strode up the grand stairway, halting at the top of the first flight of steps to gaze out an arched window overlooking the manor grounds. The sun was setting behind the trees, and in the distance, fog rolled over the city proper. On that fog shone a yellow light outlining the shape of a bat.

  
It was his father’s sign. Had Damian been a different child, he might have grinned into the twilight— but Damian was not a regular child. He was an assassin, a prince, and the heir to the city shining on the horizon. Everything he saw was his, and he could’t wait to take it.

  
Damian took an excited breath and clutched his book to his chest. He had removed it from the library ten minutes before, while wandering the house for the first time. His father’s house was huge and imposing, full of secret corners and old stories.

  
Damian loved it. He loved the smooth handrails and the heavy wooden furniture. He loved the library and the long hallways lined with family— Damian’s family— portraits in golden frames. He loved the velvet curtains. He loved the dramatic windows and the old clock and the iron gates that read “Wayne Manor.”

  
Wayne. Damian tried on the name “Wayne.” He was Damian Wayne, of Gotham, and he was here to seize it. Mother always called him a conqueror; well here at last was his world to conquer… to conquer alongside his father.

  
His father! Damian had spent years fighting to know, longing to know his father’s name, and now he knew it. He knew about the Batman. The Batman! Damian’s father was a legend, a living myth, the ruler of darkness and the darkened city. Who else was worthy? Who else could possibly be the man Damian waited ten years to meet?

  
Damian traced the lettering on the front of his book: _The Complete Sherlock Holmes_. He had left his own copy on the island miles away. That was fine. This book would do. It belonged to his father. He flipped open a page at random and read:

  
_He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumor or suspicion of unsolved crime._

  
Damian closed the book. In his mind, he heard a single word in his mother’s voice.

  
_Detective_.

  
Damian’s heart beat fast in anticipation. They would be father and son, Batman and Robin, together to strike terror into the hearts of those that deserved Damian’s wrath. There were obstacles, of course, but none that were insurmountable. They would be easy enough to subdue.

  
Damian hurried up the second flight of stairs, towards his room on the second floor. It was time to collect his blades.

  
He had work to do.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then directly after that, he tried to murder Tim. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick and Bruce have a conversation about Damian's love.

Damian wasn’t in his bedroom, but Bruce didn’t expect him to be. Damian always left the manor after he and Bruce had a fight; four minutes, however, was an impressively short amount of time to have done so.

  
Damian could be anywhere now, but some places were more likely than others. Bruce sighed, picked up his phone, and called Dick. Dick would probably know.

  
He got a busy tone, hung up, and sat down to wait. Thirteen minutes later, Dick called him back.

  
“You talked to him?” Bruce asked, in lieu of a greeting.

  
“Yeah. He’s coming over.”

  
“Did he say what happened?”

  
“Just that you argued.”

  
Bruce ran a hand through his hair. “I guess that’s all you need to know.”

  
“He’s with me tonight.”

  
“Fine.”

  
“I’ll make sure he goes home in the morning.”

  
“Thank you.” Bruce paused, uncertain. “Dick?”

  
“Yeah?”

  
“Make sure you… take care of him. He loves you.”

  
“He loves you too, you know.”

  
“But he loved you first.”

  
The line went silent for a few seconds, then Dick spoke again. “I don’t think that’s true.”

  
“Dick…” said Bruce tiredly.

  
“I don’t mean that in a comforting way.”

  
Interesting. Bruce nodded. “Go on.”

  
Dick hesitated, like he was trying to find the right words. “We thought you were dead,” he said finally.

  
“I know.”

  
“Damian and I were together for all of that. I saw him go through it.”

  
“And?”

  
“And everything he did was about his father’s legacy. Everything. He used to tell me that I was ‘unfit to wear your mantle.’”

  
Bruce smiled. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  
“Thanks,” said Dick. “He saw you as this mountain of a man. You were everything he aspired to be, and when he did start to change, you were his model. He looked up to you so much, even when we thought you were gone forever. More than anything else, he wanted to be Bruce Wayne’s son.”

  
“Ah.”

  
“You see the problem,” said Dick mildly.

  
Bruce did. “Our past.”

  
“Your past,” Dick agreed. “You didn’t want him to be your son, did you?”

  
“No,” said Bruce. “I didn’t.”

  
“That was pretty clear to everyone, especially Damian.”

  
Bruce stayed quiet. He wanted to hear the end of this.

  
“When we found out you weren’t dead… Bruce, he was terrified. He thought you were going to throw him out, and it hurt him, badly. Do you know why?”

  
“Because he loved me.”

  
“Yes.”

  
“Even then? Before…everything?”

  
Dick sighed. “Bruce, he loved you from the second he saw you. You just didn’t love him back.”

  
Bruce felt that one like a punch to the chest. He set his phone down, picked it up again, set it down, then finally decided to continue the conversation. “But you…?”

  
“I made a choice— to help him, to be there for him, to love him. We didn’t start out okay. It was hard, and it took a long time to build trust, and I don’t know when he started to love me, because I’m not his father. He didn’t spend his whole life desperate to be with me. But he is with me now, pretty literally. He’s walking in my door.”

  
“Tell him I’m sorry.”

  
“Come tell him yourself. Tomorrow, when he’s ready to go home.”

  
“I— okay.” Bruce could hear Damian’s footsteps walking into the room. At least he was safe. That was something.

  
“Hanging up now,” said Dick. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

 


	8. Pond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian and Jason hang out. It's just straightforward fluff.

Damian sighed. “They’re not my birds,” he explained. “They live on the grounds, and they’re self sufficient. I just make things easier for them.”

  
Jason nodded and threw another handful of corn into the pond. A horde of tiny ducklings swarmed around the kernels.

  
“Do they have names?” he asked.

  
“They do,” said Damian, without elaborating.

  
“When did they hatch?”

  
“Two weeks ago. They appear to be healthy.”

  
“That’s good.”

  
“Yes.”

  
Damian took another handful of corn. Jason watched him toss kernels with a practiced hand in front of individual ducks. The fluffy little things plunged their heads into the water to retrieve them, then came back to the surface making what Jason assumed were happy duck sounds. He wouldn’t really know.

  
“It’s nice out here,” he said, after a few moments of silence.

  
Damian nodded.

  
“I remember when I first came to the manor. I had never been around, I don’t know, nature before. I mean, I’d seen parks and trees, but nothing like—” he gestured across the manor grounds— “nothing like this.”

  
The manor grounds stretched for miles beyond the little pond. Even now, Jason looked out over it and felt impressed. It was beautiful: trees and flowers and the ponds and the lake, all connected by little streams of water running in between. The setting sun turned everything red and purple. It reflected off the ducklings’ ripples as it sank slowly towards the tree line.

  
The first fireflies lit up around the yard. Damian reached up and caught one in the palm of his hand. He looked down at it, then gently released it back into the sky. It blinked and disappeared somewhere in the twilight air.

  
“I was the opposite,” said Damian. “I came here and missed the mountains. The manor was the closest I could get.”

  
“Do you like the city?”

  
Damian shrugged. “Yes and no. It’s different, but it’s…” he gestured vaguely in front of him. “I like the layers and the back alleys and the crowds. I like the feeling of… knowing? Knowing all of it, and knowing where I am. It’s…”

  
“Home?” Jason suggested.

  
“Home,” Damian agreed. “And so is this.” He glanced backward at the manor proper. The arched windows gleamed in the last rays of sunlight. Damian smiled.

  
“Mountain or skyscraper, it all looks beautiful from above.”

  
“Yeah,” said Jason. “I guess so.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends Damian Week 2019 :)


End file.
